Movies

“Orange is the New Black” writer Piper Kerman has become a celebrity for getting involved in a heroin-smuggling conspiracy in her early 20s, and it turns out the guy allegedly behind that conspiracy is still at large.

The Chicago Tribune recently pointed out that the federal case involving Kerman — whose book inspired the hit Netflix show — is still wide open. That case dates back to 1994, and most of the 14 defendants were convicted long ago.

But the alleged kingpin, a man named Buruji Kashamu, has evaded U.S. authorities. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago refused to drop the indictment against him in 2011, but he’s been safe in Nigeria for years.

The Tribune notes that the case against Kashamu been particularly frustrating for prosecutors in Chicago because he was arrested in England in 1998 and held for five years. But British authorities reportedly refused to extradite him back to the U.S. after finding the eyewitness identification of him was weak. He returned to Nigeria, where he’s reportedly been active in the country’s politics.

Kerman signed a plea agreement for her relatively minor role in Kashamu’s alleged conspiracy, and she ended up serving 11 months in federal person. Her role involved transporting $50,000 in drug money from the U.S. to Europe for her girlfriend, who had a bigger role in the alleged heroin-smuggling conspiracy.

Although Kerman pleaded guilty to her crime in 1998, her ordeal was dragged out because feds wanted her to testify against Kashamu in “street clothes, not an orange jumpsuit,” Kerman wrote in Marie Claire. Thus for five years, she had to live her life with the prospect of prison hanging over her head.

It was only after Britain finally released him in 2003 that she could finally start doing her time — and getting some inspiration for her best-selling memoir.

For his part, Kashamu claims that the government is fingering the wrong guy and that he’s not in fact the drug kingpin known as “Alajj,” according to the Tribune. Alajj was, in fact, his dead brother, Kashamu says. The U.S. is still apparently trying to have Kashamu extradited from Nigeria, though.

“We’re still trying to figure out ways we can fix this for Buruji,” his Chicago lawyer, Scott Frankel, told the Tribune. “They’re trying to bring this guy back and then have a bunch of people who haven’t seen him in years testify that he’s the guy.”

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie made for a reported $165 million, “Extinction” is the franchise’s worst-reviewed entry to date.

Michael Bay’s noisy “Transformers” series returns to the big screen this weekend for the fourth time in seven years. Again it’ll muster the sad inevitable: Atrocious reviews will do nothing to stave off the hundreds of millions of dollars “Age of Extinction” moviegoers shower upon the blockbuster.

This one exchanges Shia LaBeouf for Mark Wahlberg, but it doesn’t want for any of the bad reviews that came with the previous installments.

There are some good things about the movie, as we point out here, but they’re few and far between. Here are some of the worst things critics have written:

1. “Deafening, deadening and about two hours too long, ‘Extinction’ would mark the weakest installment yet of the 7-year-old Hasbro franchise — if the previous three movies were discernible from one another.” — Scott Bowles, USA Today

2. “Actually, director Michael Bay’s fourth heavy-metal installment is sensory overload in every sense. Noise, action, rubble. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so punishingly long — 2 hours and 45 minutes of furious pandemonium. You leave the cineplex feeling bludgeoned.” — David Hiltbrand, The Philadelphia Inquirer

3. “Just bracing myself for 165 minutes of explosions, car chases, cars turning into robots, images of cars, robots, and tiny human figures spinning in slow motion after an explosion or a car chase, ludicrous bathos, tight shots looking up Nicola Peltz’s tiny shorts, stentorian sound effects, cheap Wagnerian music, all shot and edited as if by a Cuisinart. In short, the cinematic equivalent of being tied in a bag and being beaten by pipes.” — Peter Keough, The Boston Globe

4. “With ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction,’ the start of a — everyone duck! — second trilogy in his metalhead franchise, the Bay-man has made the worst and most worthless ‘Transformers’ movie yet. I know, hard to believe, right? How could any summer blockbuster be as dull, dumb and soul-sucking as the first three ‘Transformers’ movies? Step right up. … Kill me now.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

5. “All those minutes devoted to crunching metal come at the expense of not just character and plot development, but also simple transitions. The movie moves both too slowly and too quickly, as scene transitions appear to have been stripped or significantly shortened during the editing process. Even the lengthy run time isn’t sufficient to develop the many story lines.” — Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

6. “Bay at his worst is like an attention-deficient kid banging his toy bots together in the basement rec room. You wonder what enormity he would have hatched with another Hasbro franchise: Mr. Potato Head.” — Richard Corliss, TIME

7. “The film makes some attempts at winking to the audience with what I’d have to imagine is deliberately corny dialogue, but those clumsy stabs at ironic humor actually just serve to aggravate more. Oh so you know this is terrible, and yet you’re still pummeling us with incomprehensible action sequence after incomprehensible action sequence until our eyes and ears are bleeding? Thanks a lot.” — Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

8. “The new ‘Transformers’ is a completely unnecessary and soul-crushing 165 minutes long, bloated by exposition and plot turns that sound as if they were being made up as the movie was shot. You could cut 45 minutes out of ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ in completely random places; it would be a much better movie (and only slightly less coherent).” — Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

9. “This series was never good, but it was once fun, or at least flashy. Now that its gears have gone rusty, it’s time for an ‘Alien vs. Predator’-style rethink. It’s lucky that Hasbro owns other properties. How about ‘Transformers Vs. My Little Pony’? — Kyle Smith, New York Post

10. “Throw in the usual dollops of macho posturing (Cade and Shane fight over Tessa until they finally bond over firing big guns together), casual racism, and sexism (the women here are either slinky supermodels, overweight caricatures, or annoying senior citizens), and you have yourself yet another ‘Transformers’ money-making machine. It’s no doubt going to be good for business, but it’s yet another paper-cut on the soul of the movies.” — Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

11. “What is extinguished is the audience’s consciousness after being bombarded for nearly three hours with overwrought emotions (‘There’s a missile in the living room!’ Tessa hollers — twice), bad one-liners and battles that rarely rise above the banal. A trio of editors make a technical marvel out of the fight scenes, but can do little to link the story’s multiple threads into something coherent.” — Clarence Tsui, The Hollywood Reporter

12. “Hello, police? I’d like to report an assault.

Where? Down at the MegaGigaGrandePlex, and it’s still going on. Come quick! I barely escaped with my life.

The perp? Michael Bay. He gave me a full-body beatdown.

His weapon? ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction.'” — Soren Andersen, The Seattle Times

13. “‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ is basically a shambles. If you do see it, I suggest you savor each image on its own terms as a work of CGI art. Dig the bombardment. Forget trying to figure out who’s zapping whom and why. Free your mind — or risk having it transformed into porridge.” — David Edelstein, Vulture

14. “Ultimately, ‘Age of Extinction’ is an endless barrage of nonsense and noise. You almost don’t even care who wins, just that it ends. Bay has said that this film will kick off a second trilogy of ‘Transformers’ movies — and I think he’s serious. That means there will be (at least) two more of these things. God help us all.” — Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

In The Expendables 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team comes face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. Stonebanks, who eluded death once before, now is making it his mission to end The Expendables — but Barney has other plans. Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.

Even though the movie, Maleficient, will be out later in the year, we found out that Angelina’s Jolie’s daughter will be in it and will star alongside her mother. Her name is Vivienne.

According to Angelina… “We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors,” Jolie told EW’s Anthony Breznican in a new interview. “That’s not our goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn’t become actors. But [Vivienne] was 4 at the time and other 3- and 4-year-old [actors] really wouldn’t come near me. Big kids thought I was cool! But little kids really didn’t like me. So, in order to have a child that wants to play with [Maleficent] but I don’t want to play with her — to have that scene, it had to be a child that really liked me and wasn’t afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be Viv.”

Disney’s much anticipated movie, “Maleficent” which will premièred on the 30th of May. The trailer which was released on Tuesday showed a whole new dark, mysterious side to Jolie’s maleficent character.

In the 2014 remake of the story, Maleficent is shown to have once been a winged creature, whose flight was stolen by evil forces.

The trailer makes the film’s antihero seem sympathetic for about a second, before reminding us that she’s actually frightening. Her fire-breathing dragon seals the effect of her terrifying persona.

Myriad sequels — including a third dose of Tony Stark — led Hollywood to its biggest box office sales ever. That’s despite what appears to be flat ticket sales from last year. Citing new data from Rentrak, Bloomberg says North American movie theaters will beat last year’s $10.8 billion in revenue, but just barely. That’s due to theaters charging more for admission, alongside premium amenities like IMAX screens, high-end food, and booze.Marvel’s Iron Man 3 led the way, raking in $409 million in sales, followed by The Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire, which pulled in $393.5 million. Universal’s Despicable Me 2trailed just behind at $367.8 million.

It’s official: Fans will have one last opportunity to see Paul Walker on the big screen.

After much speculation as to whether the 40-year-old actor would appear in Fast & Furious 7 following his tragic death in a fiery car crash on Saturday, Nov. 30, Universal Pictures has since confirmed Walker will appear in the latest instalment of the film franchise, which is set to hit theatres on April 10, 2015.

The controversies aroused by Abdellatif Kechiche’s new film, “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” show just how hung up on s*x Americans are, left and right—and why, to a certain extent, they’re right to be hung up on s*x, even while drawing the wrong conclusions. The movie has proven controversial in a variety of ways (unfolded here by my colleague Emily Greenhouse), but all the debate would have slipped away into footnotes of the classic “tortured genius” genre if not for the three long, explicit s*x scenes. Those are what sparked criticism from Julie Maroh, the author of the graphic novel from which the film was adapted, for “the director’s visual bias,” andfrom Manohla Dargis, of the Times, who likens Kechiche’s filming to pornography. The scenes have led to the film being banned in Idaho and to an NC-17 rating that the IFC Center in New York is defying—to the outrage of the Parents Television Council, which is threatening to make it a “national issue.”

The film’s two lead actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux—who were jointly awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival along with Kechiche—spoke of the scenes, with Seydoux calling them “very embarrassing” and Exarchopoulos saying as much in different terms. Exarchopoulos—who plays the title character (the French title translates to “The Life of Adèle, Chapters 1 and 2”)—later addressed the excessive attention paid to the twenty minutes of s*x in the three-hour movie:

I understand it. American audiences aren’t used to it. It’s a choice by the director. We all have s*x, it’s like a drug, everyone loves it. We had to show how making love to someone is visceral. We had to convey how much of yourself you give over. So we chose to show to everyone the emotion behind the discovering of one’s s*xuality.

We are adults, so come on. It’s fiction, it’s cinema. I don’t get the big deal.

Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic-powered mega-beast laying waste to Japan in Toho’s 1954 Godzilla, and the new movie harks back to the roots of the original in both look and theme.

This trailer has now been released to promote the forthcoming film of Godzilla in May 2014, directed by British director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) and starring Aaron-Taylor Johnson, Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen.

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